1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a single-lens reflex camera having a live view display function. The live view display function is to display a series of images repeatedly acquired by an image pickup device on a display device as a moving picture. The live view display function is also called a through-image display function or an electronic finder function.
2. Description of the Related Art
While traditional cameras were designed to view a subject image through an optical finder, a growing number of recent digital cameras have incorporated a function, so-called live view display function, for displaying live images acquired by an image pickup device continuously on a display device such as an LCD monitor or the like. These digital cameras having the live view display function may have an optical finder or not.
Such a live view display function causes no parallax, for example, and it is effective for macro shooting and the like. For this and other reasons, various examples of including the live view display function in the single-lens reflex digital camera have been proposed.
For example, there is proposed a single-lens reflex digital camera capable of displaying a live view, in which an optical finder display mode and an electronic finder display mode are selectable (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-369042). In this digital single-lens reflex camera, when the electronic finder display mode is selected, a movable mirror is retracted from the shooting optical path and a focal-plane shutter is fully opened to guide light of a subject image to an image pickup device in order to display a series of acquired subject images continuously on an LCD monitor.
In the meantime, in a single-lens reflex camera having this type of live view function, the shutter charge operation and the retraction of the movable reflecting mirror from the shooting optical path are performed concurrently. Then, when the camera enters a shooting operation from a state where a live view is being displayed, the shutter closing operation is necessary once to block light entering the image pickup device in order to prevent a smear phenomenon on the image pickup device. On the other hand, since the movable reflecting mirror is in the retracted state from the shooting optical path while the live view is being displayed, it has only to maintain the state even when the camera enters the shooting operation. However, conventionally, the movable reflecting mirror is also driven when the camera enters the shooting operation from the state where the live view is being displayed.